Something new

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mira
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Something new

Post by mira »

So I've just had one massive nostalgia trip scrolling through these forums and recognising so many usernames and avatars from all (both) those years ago when I used to be active here. But I'm back now, and hopefully I'll get back into conlanging because I'm in desperate need of something new to invest brain power in that isn't programming as that's basically my life now.

No idea how similar or different this language will turn out compared to the type of projects I was starting before, but it'll definitely still be from the same "a priori engelang no-inconsistencies-will-be-tolerated" ballpark. If any reactionary phrase will guide the creation of this language, it'll be "oh that makes sense" [:D] in that I want everything to feel at least somewhat justified where possible. I've not done this in ages though, so I'm starting simple and seeing what I remember and going from there. Here's hoping it doesn't meet the same "drifted into the void" fate that all my other conlangs met.

So, here's a phonology:

Code: Select all

/ p b t d k ɡ ʔ / < p b t d k g ' >
/  m   n   ŋ    / <  m   n   ng   >
/ f v ʃ ʒ x     / < f v s z x     >
/ w   ɹ l j ʀ   / < w   r l j rh  >

       / i    u / < i    u >
       /  e ə o / <  e _ o >
       /   a    / <   a    >
  • A vowel may be written twice to produce a long vowel.
  • The schwa is unwritten as it comes only from unstressed vowels.
Notes on formatting:
  • IPA is always between slashes as you expect.
  • bold text is the romanised form, and I will preference this everywhere applicable as it's much easier to type.
And here's some phonotactic rules:
  • Syllable structure is (C)V(C).
  • ' may only appear after a vowel and before either a plosive or another vowel.
  • ' may not be an onset.
  • Vowels may be doubled to create long forms /Vː/.
  • w, r, j, and rh may not be codas.
  • l is realised as /ɫ/ in codas.
I'll start posting stuff about grammar ideas later on, but the general idea I'm going for is something fairly analytical with agglutination used for a few things (almost certainly going to make the genitive an affix and pull the other cases over with it). Going to go for a more common SVO order rather than OSV which I used to be mad for. I haven't really thought much about it all yet though to that could all end up different.
Last edited by mira on 14 Feb 2020 20:27, edited 1 time in total.
website | music | she/her | :gbr: native :deu: beginner
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Pabappa
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Re: Something new

Post by Pabappa »

In the last sentence of phonotactics, Im not sure what you mean. Did you leave something out? Also. Can /ng/ be a cluster?
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gestaltist
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Re: Something new

Post by gestaltist »

Welcome back. Good luck with the project.

Are you seriously romanizing the schwa with an underscore? Or was it a typo?
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GoshDiggityDangit
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Re: Something new

Post by GoshDiggityDangit »

gestaltist wrote: 14 Feb 2020 08:44 Are you seriously romanizing the schwa with an underscore? Or was it a typo?
Perhaps the underscore is marking that it is (generally) unwritten?
“Like billowing clouds, Like the incessant gurgle of the brook,
The longing of the spirit can never be stilled.” ― St. Hildegard von Bingen
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mira
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Re: Something new

Post by mira »

Pabappa wrote: 14 Feb 2020 01:03 In the last sentence of phonotactics, Im not sure what you mean. Did you leave something out? Also. Can /ng/ be a cluster?
Oops. The wording was still from when I was writing it out and had a change of plans. I've edited the post so it actually makes sense now. I'm not 100% certain exactly what you're asking about with the cluster question, but if you mean across syllable boundaries, then that is a good question as I hadn't thought of that at all [:)]. I think what's likely to happen is that n.g -> /ŋ.ɡ/ and some similar things. While writing this I also realised that g.ng for instance is absolutely horrible to say, so at some point I'll sit down and go through all possible clusters at syllable boundaries and decide which I'm going to allow.
GoshDiggityDangit wrote: 14 Feb 2020 09:33
gestaltist wrote: 14 Feb 2020 08:44 Are you seriously romanizing the schwa with an underscore? Or was it a typo?
Perhaps the underscore is marking that it is (generally) unwritten?
Correct. From the original post:
OTʜᴇB wrote: 13 Feb 2020 22:20 The schwa is unwritten as it comes only from unstressed vowels.
Under what conditions an unstressed vowel occurs I'm yet to decide, so I guess for now assume it doesn't appear anywhere, but expect it to eventually. If there's a more "correct" symbol to use there so it's clearer it's unwritten then do tell me.

In the mean time, some word orders and general syntactical structures:

From the SVO word order, I want to have serial verb construction of some form, possibly leading to some kind of SV(O)(V(O)...) (or S(VO?)+ if you prefer regex) word ordering in which the subject is applied to every part of the overall sentence.
Adjectives and adverbs will come after what they describe.
I'm going to go for active morphosyntactic alignment, in that intransitive verbs can be divided into 2 groups - one in which the subject is the agent of the action ("he eats"), and the other in which the subject is the patient ("he fell"). The former would be ordered as SV, where the latter would be VO. A verb in this second group in a serial verb construction *might* be disallowed, or I might instead have the subject still apply to it. If I allow it, then you'd get a construction like this:
3SG step.PST SUPL banana slip.PST
"he stepped on a banana and slipped"
Where it would look like this if the detail about the banana were to be omitted:
slip.PST 3SG
"he slipped"

Next I'm going to take some time to create some actual words and affixes so I can actually write out a few sentences.
website | music | she/her | :gbr: native :deu: beginner
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